Information Systems:M-Daemon Mail Server

Overview

MDaemon is a full featured email server that can be considered an alternative to Exchange or Domino or even O365. MDaemon is able to serve as an SMTP, IMAP, POP3 host and can handle many hundreds or thousands of email accounts. The software has a fully featured webmail interface called WorldClient and a web based administration page that mimics most of the configuration options that exist in the GUI. At uniPHARM, the practice is to use the MDaemon GUI to do administrative tasks such as creating new email accounts or watching server activity in real time. MDaemon also acts as a smart host for IBM Domino standing between Domino and the public internet. MDaemon is positioned in this manner because configuring its security settings are much easier compared to Domino. Getting logs from MDaemon is also considerably easier compared to Domino and how the GUI displays configuration options just appears to be more logical and easier to use compared to Domino, plus its safer to expose SMTP, IMAP, POP3 ports from the public internet to MDaemon than allowing all that dirty public traffic onto an interface on the Power8.

Be aware that although the number of email orders flowing from pharmacies through Barracuda to MDaemon has been reduced, there are still some shareholders that send email orders and they do get received by MDaemon and then get forwarded to the Power8 for processing by IMS IMP and IOP. If MDaemon is offline then email flow will stop for everything inbound and outbound. The other big concept to understand is that while MDaemon can stand on its own and do everything related to email, we don't use any of its anti-spam features because Barracuda is responsible for that. MDaemon does scan each inbound and outbound email with its internal anti-virus scanner and can quarantine messages that contain a virus, but its not doing any filtering based on the spaminess of any message. uniPHARM renews the yearly support contract for MDaemon with C&C Software in Ontario each August so that we can call them for support (rare) and be entitled to version upgrades for MDaemon and the Security Plus addon which does the AV scanning. Upgrading MDaemon and Security Plus is always fairly straight forward - stop the services and run each installer. The maker of MDaemon is a company called Alt-N and they put in a lot of effort to make the upgrade installers work safely and consistently. Alt-N is also very aggressive at creating updated versions with bug fixes for the existing code.

If our install of MDaemon does need to be moved to a new VM, the daily configuration backup is going to be absolutely critical because that config backup holds all the settings for MDaemon. According to Alt-N, in order to move the install you first stop all services do an in place upgrade to the latest version, copy the C:\MDaemon folder to the new VM, run the latest installer version again on the new VM and reboot. The new VM would ideally have the same IP and host name and DNS settings as the old VM (which would be off) and that should be enough to get MDaemon up and responding on a new VM. Also, if a move is needed, its necessary to understand that there are shareholder pharmacies that do use our MDaemon server for all of their email needs. Some pharmacies are using O365 or Gsuite but some are dependent on MDaemon and any configuration changes need to have that in mind.

World Client

Web Browser Email For Shareholders

MDaemon has a built in web server that is installed on the mail server. The web server is secured with an SSL certificate and the URL is

https://mail.unipharm.com

This website shows up as “World Client”. Think of it as iNotes for MDaemon. Any email account in MDaemon is accessible using this website. The username is the full email address and the password is the password for that email account.

For example

Username test@unipharm.com Password bed

Only a few shareholders use this service, the majority still use various flavours of Outlook or some other email program. Internet Explorer version 10 and 11 and recent versions of Firefox are required for the World Client website to work. IE 6,7,8,9 will not work.

Problems

Locked Accounts

MDaemon may automatically accounts based on certain activity patterns. One such rule is the attempt SMTP sending of 250 outbound messages in 30 minutes. This indicates a hijacked account, and requires that the password be changed for the account. Following, this any active SMTP sessions (likely many if this is a botnet hijack) need to be terminated, and this is best done by restarting the SMTP server component of MDaemon.